UK Learning Support Built Around Your Child

What this section of the site is for

This is the starting point for everything Pobbi publishes for families in the UK. Underneath it sit pages by subject, by school year and by the questions parents actually type at ten o'clock at night — whether a tutor is worth it, what Year 7 maths involves, why reading comprehension marks slipped, what to do when homework turns into an argument.

The aim of this page is narrower than a product pitch. It is to help you work out which of those pages you need, and to be clear about the one thing Pobbi is designed to do: find the earlier skill behind a repeated mistake, practise it with hints rather than answers, and show you what shifted.

Year groups, key stages and why the labels matter

Searches for school help go wrong in the UK because two labelling systems run side by side. Parents talk in year groups — Year 5, Year 7, Year 9 — while schools and published materials often talk in key stages. In England and Wales, Key Stage 1 covers Years 1 and 2, Key Stage 2 covers Years 3 to 6, Key Stage 3 covers Years 7 to 9, and Key Stage 4 covers Years 10 and 11, ending in GCSEs.

The devolved nations add another layer. The National Curriculum in England is the reference point most resources are written against, and it applies to local-authority-maintained schools; academies and free schools have more freedom over how they organise it. Scotland works to Curriculum for Excellence with its own primary and secondary stage names, Wales follows the Curriculum for Wales, and Northern Ireland has its own arrangements. A worksheet labelled "Year 7" is not automatically aligned with what your child is doing this term.

Pobbi therefore works from the order in which skills depend on each other rather than from a year label. Fractions sit under ratio and under algebra regardless of which nation or key stage the child is in.

The two moments when parents usually start looking

The Year 6 to Year 7 move is the one families underestimate most. A child goes from one teacher who knew them to a timetable of specialists, and a wobble that primary would have absorbed can go unnoticed for a term.

What sits underneath this page

• Maths support — including Year 7, fractions and tutor alternatives
• English support — reading comprehension and writing
• Science support — including fair tests in Year 7
• Homework help that teaches
• Tracking learning progress
• What private tutoring costs

What Pobbi does, stated plainly

Three things. A short learning check that looks for the missing prior skill instead of grading this week's topic. Guided practice where a mistake produces a hint, a smaller question or a simpler example rather than the finished answer. And a parent view that says, in ordinary language, what changed between sessions and what to practise next.

Three things it does not do. It is not a live tutor and there is no human on the other end. It does not claim to cover any nation's curriculum in full. And it is not exam preparation — for GCSE coaching, for a diagnosed additional need, or for a child who needs a relationship with an adult who knows them, a teacher or tutor is the better answer. Pobbi can make that first paid hour more useful by telling you what to ask for.

Questions UK parents ask

Should I wait for the school report before acting?

Reports and parents' evenings arrive after a term of evidence has already accumulated. The signals at home come earlier: how long homework takes compared with September, whether your child can explain a method without rereading it, and whether the same kind of question keeps going wrong.

My child is meeting expectations but says they don't understand. Which do I trust?

Both, because they measure different things. Meeting expectations describes performance on familiar question formats. Understanding shows up when the format changes. Ask your child to explain why a method works, or change one number in a question and see whether they can still start.

Is a tutor worth it?

Often, but rarely as the first step. An hour of a tutor's time spent supervising homework changes very little. The same hour spent on a gap you have already identified is worth a great deal. The sequence matters more than the decision.

Does this work for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?

The skill sequences do, because they are not specific to one nation's curriculum. The year-group labels used across these pages follow the English system, so parents elsewhere in the UK should map them to their own stage names rather than assume they match.